When you are all set to start your own business, something which you've dreamed for all your life, it's a great feeling to see it come true. You can finally open the gates to your customers and start making your own money. However, the first day of your business has to be big as it is truly an occasion to celebrate. For this small business marketing, you need to prepare for this grand opening, with announcements, invitations, and souvenirs. Ideas for Grand Openings When you are opening up a business, like a hardware store, restaurant, bookshop, or even a grocery store, there always has to be an opening ceremony. The cause is not just celebration but also publicity, to let people know what your business is all about. Soft-Opening Sometimes in entrepreneurship, people don't mind having a soft-opening to ensure that all systems in the business are running smoothly before opening in full swing. If you too want to do this, then you can hold a simple soft opening party and invite your family, friends, and close business contacts for the same. This will surely build excitement in them for the grand opening and create the initial buzz among your social circle and also among the people around you. Announcements Once you have made your soft-opening, the next thing you can do is to make the announcement of your grand opening a week or two before the date. Displaying, visually interesting and eye-catching signs and banners of your business can be a great idea. When you display banners and make publicity on such a large level, it will gain the interest of the public and hopefully, some local press too. If you have the budget, you can also use marketing tools like advertisements in your local newspaper or lease a billboard in your area. Printing out fliers and distributing them to the community could also be a great way of making announcements that you are now open for business. Invitations The announcements follow sending out invitations not only to friends, but more importantly to your business contacts, especially your suppliers, potential clients, and labor (if any). This is very important and necessary in establishing a good professional relationship with them. This also leads to encouraging initial transactions and sales with all the people your business is attached to. You can also use the media if you want to publicize on a major level. Social media like newspapers, magazines, television channels, etc. can also be invited, if you want them to publicize your products in their media. Grand Opening Activities With all the above mentioned homework, you can be sure to expect a lot of people coming to your business grand opening, who are groundbreaking. Once they are there you have to make sure that they enjoy their time during the event. Apart from food and entertainment, you can organize a short program that will introduce your business to the guests like a PowerPoint presentation, which tells the inspiration of the business. You can make it in such a way that it relates to them, on why they should support your products and services to make it a big hit! Souvenirs To make these ideas more interesting, souvenirs can be used. These are optional, but highly recommended, as you should provide your guests with something to take home with them for the sake of appreciation. Press kits, business profile and product lists and some free goodies which can be gift certificates or discount coupons can do it all as attractive souvenirs. The entire motive here is not only to make the event more memorable and enjoyable, but also to encourage them to return to your business no longer as a guest, but as a customer. With these wonderful grand opening ideas you can be sure, to gather many customers in no time for your products. So make the most out of these ideas and you can put in some of your own creativity to make the event more engaging!